tisdag 16 juni 2009

Force Tracks releases the ideal meditative urban music. While ambient, drone, noise is the typical soundtrack for sinking into the void of contemplative nothingness, the dubbed-out tech-house and digital disco that Force Tracks has specialized in means meditation in movement, it means contemplating when moving through squares, stores, parks, crowds in streets, it means the increased perception of the urban landscape when riding buses and trains with headphones. House music, generally bouncing along at around 120 bpm (which equals the heart rate of an excited human body), becomes the city's pulse.

This is not the same landscape as in the futuristic, industrial decay of Detroit, nor the deep bunker dubs of Basic Channel. This is not the wastelands. It is more affirmative than critical in relation to the modern urban landscape. That comes from a technological paradigm, from the fact that we are listening to laptop-techno, dance music that puts the best elements from IDM and glitch upon a finely mechanized funk; the analog assassins have grown up. The Birth Of New Life has become adult. Some days that feels like a good thing.

måndag 15 juni 2009

I want to thank everyone who has pointed me towards this name in the past. With time you get to the important things in life - whether it be books, movies, or music - and then it all makes sense. I rarely listen to mixes (I prefer the fully physical live situation, with people moving mechanically around me; or perhaps I just have too short attention to span), but when it is put together this brilliantly, it is visionary funk in its purest, most beautiful form. It takes you places never seen, never before imagined.

fredag 12 juni 2009

Big Pun was mad charismatic, made better battle raps than anybody, managed to pull of some OK club songs, penned introspective and relationship songs without making a fool of himself, narrated great storytelling tracks, and even dropped powerful political comments. And he was the illest lyrcially, ever. He seperated himself from other technical monsters, such as Canibus, by always keeping the multisyllable madness, the scientific, hyper futuristic lingo deep within the pain and struggles of his everyday life. It is there for a reason, not for just for showing off.

Let us look at often quoted rhyme from his first album. Being in need of money, Fat Joe and Big Pun have agreed to do a quick job for the mob. Everything seemed to go be going well, but soon they will discover something about the people they left "dead in the middle of Little Italy":

With that language-stretching syllable-fest he establishes the scene, introduces two minor characters, tells us what happened to them, and what went wrong. I'm not saying he was the greatest ever. But had he been able to carry his weight and record a catalouge as deep as those of Scarface, Cormega, Ice-T, KRS-ONE, Tupac Shakur, Kool G Rap or Rakim, he might have been just that.

At times Big Pun preferred to spit that undilluted street venom so very few artists are capable of producing these days. Besides being the most technical, he was also one of the most hardcore rappers ever. Proof below; Pun at his rawest, ugliest, at his most obnoxious and ignorant.

I watched Alex Jones' The Obama Deception yesterday (well, most of it anyway).

While it surely is wise to pay special attention to what kind of people the new president puts in his government (as we saw in the documentary mostly bank people, members of the Bilderbergs and The Trilateral Commision, leftovers from the Bush administration, even Henry Kissinger (of all people) as an advisor), Jones' extreme emphasis on certain people and secret organizations does the whole thing a disservice. Conspiracy theory does not make you feel like the world is in our hands (which it really is), but in the hands of a few very powerful men. His dada-like gusto and ability to dig up interesting factoids should be acknowledged, but his analytical tools need to be sharpened.

What I gained from watching this was mainly a deeper respect for KRS-ONE (who stops by to give his two cents on the new administration). He is one of the few rappers who has had the balls and the intelligence to critize the first black president. His message: "Don't get caught up in the emotionalism of Obama!"

Kris is still completely on top of his game, spiritually profound and verbally razor-sharp, having stayed relevant for more than 20 years, releasing more than 20 albums (Pick It Up form the youtube-clip sounds pretty dope, Maximum Strenght needs to be looked into), and succeeding with seemingly impossible tasks, such as incorporating dancehall and vegetarianism into the boom and the bap and still keeping it one hundred percent hardcore. Twenty-two years after Criminal Minded, he still smacks you over the head verbally. If it is one artist I would like to see live, it would be the Blastmaster.

Now what Alex Jones really should do is record an album with the God, supplying the anti-governmental motivation speeches and creepy electronics backdrops that we are used to from his movies to The Teacher's most politically explicit verses.

tisdag 9 juni 2009

Traveling at the Speed of Thought: an incredibly well written article about old school maestro Paul C, the man who taught Large Professor everything he needed to become the producer he is today, and he also supplied the musical brainpower needed to make Critical Beatdown a classic. Why is Give The Drummer Some one of the funkiest tracks ever? Because of Paul C.

Together with other genius innovators such as Kurtis Mantronik and The 45 King, he is a half-forgotten (extra obscure perhaps "because he preferred to work without contracts", and so mostly "did not receive credit for his production") master architect of this rap music thing. These people were the Premiers and Pete Rocks of their generation.

"Paul C panned the record, then he just flipped out on the programming. It was crazy.” Extra P says, “It was crazy” three more times and grimaces like it’s so good, it’s McNasty.

onsdag 3 juni 2009

Hard techno is for dancing rather than for listening alone. But some unmerciful tracks of that late industrial funk music do have that repetitive, meditative quality that makes them work just as well in your headphones as on the dance floor. They win in both situations because, as I see it, the track itself emulates the slow and subtle shifts of the uncompromising techno DJ.

Monotonous music opens your head. This concept goes back to Erik Satie.

"Vexations is a noted musical work by Erik Satie. It consists of a short chordal passage and a bass line which is repeated twice in each repetition of the piece. Satie recommends on the score that 'To play this motif 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities.' While the 840 repetitions aren't obligatory, many artists have followed the enigmatic suggestion and played the piece with many repetitions."

"The work was first played in public the requisite 840 times, by a team of pianists: John Cage, David Tudor, Christian Wolff, Philip Corner, Viola Farber, Robert Wood, MacRae Cook, John Cale, David Del Tredici, James Tenney, Howard Klein (the New York Times reviewer, who coincidentally was asked to play in the course of the event) and Joshua Rifkin, with two reserves, on September 9, 1963, from 6 p.m. to 12:40 p.m. the following day."

If you loop something it changes. The sounds grow. Repetition is difference. "You can't step into the same river twice", as Heraclitus put it, to which Chuck D responded, "You Can't Stop The Bum Rush". What a brother know?

Is it just me, or does B-Real just get better with time? Making music with La Coka Nostra must have made him sharpen his swords. The Chef sounds hungry, so they blend together nicely, just like Wu and Cypress did on Temple Of Boom (which in my opinion still ranks among the most solid rap albums ever).